This month marks the 20th anniversary of the murder of Stephanie Hummer, an 18-year-old from
Cincinnati who was a freshman at Ohio State University. The brutal crime shocked the university
community and made headlines across the state.

The impact of Stephanie’s death was so profound that both
The Columbus Dispatch and the
Cincinnati Enquirer, on the fifth anniversary of the crime, ran front-page stories on the
unsolved murder and its aftermath.

Stephanie’s friends last saw her when she left them about 3:30 a.m. on March 6, 1994, to walk
alone to her residence in the Evans Scholars House on East 14th Avenue, just a half block off High
Street. She was abducted and murdered, and her body was found about 10 hours later in a field near
Downtown.

As a result of a DNA match, her murderer, Jonathan Gravely, took a plea deal in September 2007
and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

The crime put a bright light on the serious problems of disinvestment, deterioration and crime
in the neighborhoods of the University District. In response to these problems, more and more
students were choosing to live elsewhere and anxious parents questioned whether they should even
entrust their students to Ohio State’s Columbus campus.

In January 1994, Ohio State’s then-President E. Gordon Gee and then-Mayor Greg Lashutka had
appointed the University District Improvement Task Force to investigate these problems and
recommend solutions.

Stephanie’s murder two months later gave enormous emotional weight to the deliberations of the
task force. No one doubted that the university president and the mayor jointly would commit to
implement the task force’s recommendations.

Among these recommendations was the creation in January 1995 of Campus Partners for Community
Urban Redevelopment, a nonprofit corporation affiliated with the university with representation
from the city and the University District. Campus Partners then led an 18-month community-driven
planning process to prepare a blueprint for action.

Over the next decade, a firm partnership of the university, the city and the neighborhoods of
the University District accomplished much:

Elected city officials and municipal employees at all levels committed to working closely with
neighborhood stakeholders to improve city services, including code enforcement, refuse collection
and street sweeping.

The city invested in numerous capital-improvements projects, including a new street-lighting
system proposed by Ohio State’s Undergraduate Student Government.

Columbus Police, University Police and the Community Crime Patrol enhanced coordination and
cooperation and constructed a centrally located precinct substation.

Ohio State faculty, staff and students participated in numerous community-service projects that
enhanced the quality of neighborhood life and conducted studies, including significant parking and
code enforcement reports.

Campus Partners developed South Campus Gateway, which opened in 2005, and spurred private
investment along High Street and in the predominantly student neighborhood. The student-housing
market rebounded.

Campus Partners also was the catalyst in the acquisition of a portfolio of severely distressed
government-subsidized housing in the University District’s Weinland Park neighborhood and six other
Columbus neighborhoods. Community Properties of Ohio’s renovation of this housing and effective
management have turned these apartments into neighborhood assets.

In response to Stephanie Hummer’s death, the university — under the leadership of Gee and each
of his successors — chose not to wall itself off from its neighborhoods, but instead to become a
neighbor. The well-being of its students and employees was bound to the well-being of its
neighbors.

Ohio State also reinvigorated its land-grant mission of outreach and service to the larger
society. For decades, Ohio State has had a proud agricultural heritage. In the past 20 years, the
university has affirmed that its Columbus campus is a great urban university and, as such, it also
must respond to the needs of 21st century urban America.

The University District is a much better place than it was two decades ago. As students have
returned to the area, some of the long-standing conflicts with permanent residents have resumed.
The city’s Planning Division, however, is leading a new community planning effort that may ease
some of these tensions and lay the groundwork for greater progress in the coming decades.

Even so, the University District is never likely to shed its youthful, energetic and gritty
image. Because of the size of the university’s enrollment, no other neighborhood in the state can
match the number of Ohioans and people around the world who have lived at least a portion of their
lives within a mile of 15th and High. It’s a place where memories are made.

I won’t forget Stephanie Hummer. The shared grief in her death was very real. Her parents both
were Ohio State graduates. At the time, President Gee’s daughter was a teenager. I had twin teenage
daughters. We could relate.

The university’s commitment to working with the city and the neighborhoods to improve safety and
the quality of life in the University District was what we could do to assuage the Hummers’ grief
and ours.

A few years later, Stephanie’s younger brother enrolled at Ohio State, lived in the Evans
Scholars House and became one of its student leaders, and then graduated. To me, there was no
higher compliment to our shared commitment.

Steve Sterrett was community relations director of Campus Partners from 1995 to 2010.